Desperado
by mollywebb200
Summary: Entry in the Tracy Island Writers Forum 2011 Fic Swap Challenge. Virgil and Tin-Tin want to take the easy way to Las Vegas when air travel is suspended, but Brains wants to take an old fashioned road trip.


Virgil Tracy was nervous. He wasn't sure yet if it was a good nervous or a bad nervous. Ever since they had found themselves grounded in Los Angeles from a last minute air traffic controllers strike, Brains had started acting all…twitchy. Or something. He kept muttering to himself…and knowing Brains as Virgil did, that could mean a lot of different things.

Virgil, Tin-Tin and Brains had been flying to an engineering symposium in Las Vegas, where Brains was scheduled to speak, when the walkout happened. The last leg of their chartered flight had been planned to take them from Hawaii to Las Vegas, but just as they approached the West Coast of the United States, contract talks had broken down and in a dramatic show of solidarity, every air traffic controller in the United States announced they were walking off the job for the next 24 hours. Which meant that nothing and no one was flying for the next 24 hours, unless it was a medical emergency, and the trio from Tracy Island had to terminate the airborne portion of their journey at Los Angeles International Airport.

Right after they heard the news, that's when Virgil noticed that look come into Brains' eyes…like he was _thinking_…and not his usual Einstein-was-just-getting-started kind of thinking, either. When Brains was in full-blown mad genius mode, there were only a handful of people in the world who actually could follow what he was talking about. Not that it usually mattered because he wasn't really talking for anyone to hear…he was off in his own world. You might be at the dinner table discussing something like the newest formula one racers with Alan, and Brains would suddenly stop in mid-sentence, and he'd get that thousand-yard stare and just walk away from the table. Usually to his lab. You were lucky if he didn't take out a pen and start writing on the tablecloth first. After Grandma had lost a couple of her nice linen tablecloths that way, she'd started putting out disposable place mats wherever Brains sat. Saved her a lot of aggravation, and it was a lot easier for Brains to stuff his notes into his pocket and carry them off to the lab, too. Less broken china.

But no, this look had been…twitchier. Virgil kept coming back to that word. And Brains was smiling. Nope, that was definitely not the "I'm going to the lab now to be brilliant, be back Tuesday" look. This was more like the "Let's go to South America and bungee jump from that new bridge they just opened" look. Alan and Gordon had gone with him that time. Brains had lost his glasses and Alan had lost his lunch on that one. And there was that other time, when Brains had suddenly decided to take off to Memphis to attend Elvis week. He liked Elvis. So did Grandma. They'd gone together – and neither of them had talked about it much when they returned, except to giggle a lot – yes, Brains did giggle occasionally, disturbing a sound as it could be – and show some harmless looking photographs. What happened in Memphis apparently stayed in Memphis.

Brains was continuously looking up things and texting on his data pad as Virgil stood at the carousel and gathered the luggage they'd packed for a three day trip. It had been quite a while since he had been through the vast sprawling complex that was Los Angeles International Airport, and he was concentrating more on shepherding the luggage cart, which seemed to have one dodgy corner on its antigrav bed that kept threatening to dump Tin-Tin's designer suitcases on to the deck, than he was on where they were headed. He knew Brains had been there more recently and knew where he was going – one of the surprising things about their eccentric boffin was his cast iron sense of direction – so he just more or less followed. Right now, though, Brains had darted into an airport duty-free shop with the name "Beachcomber Bill's" artfully carved into what looked like a wooden plank with little Tikis at each end, hung over the entrance.

On a rack just inside hung wildly colored shirts in shades of eye-piercing scarlets and headache-inducing oranges and greens, which Brains made a beeline to. _This does not bode well,_ Virgil thought. _I thought we left that stuff behind in Honolulu!_

He and Tin-Tin stayed outside watching Brains appear and disappear among the clothing racks and display shelves. Tin-Tin sipped on her mocha latte and checked the monorail schedules – she'd pitched that method of getting from LA to Vegas, since it was fast and easy, which was just fine by Virgil. He was far too used to getting places quickly in their proprietary craft; regular travel seemed to take forever. However, Brains had just smiled and shaken his head, saying that he had a better way. Virgil decided he'd reserve judgment on that when he saw what that was.

At that moment Brains came out of the shop. Virgil blinked twice – probably because the shirt he was now wearing was so bright it would have made a blind man squint. It was covered in large green leaves and red hibiscus blossoms, and scattered here and there were orange and blue parrots. Brains had added a woven Panama-style hat to his ensemble. It should have been hideous, but it somehow sort of suited him. Even Tin-Tin had to grudgingly admit that it matched the frames of his glasses, which were bright turquoise today.

Brains was also holding the wooden handles of a brown paper bag emblazoned with the shop's logo, Beachcomber Bill himself, sitting under a palm tree. He handed the bag to Virgil with a look of expectation.

Virgil opened the bag, winced, and handed it to Tin-Tin, who withdrew two more noisy shirts. The smaller one sported little palm trees and hula girls. The bigger one was bright aqua, which reminded Virgil vividly of the antiseptic mouthwash he'd used that morning. Except that the shirt also had fish. Lots of fish, in lots of colors, all over it. He didn't think fish, even multicolored fish, should swim in antiseptic mouthwash. Maybe he was overthinking this.

Brains then announced the Big Plan. They were to put on the shirts he had bought them, because they were all going to take a road trip. Tin-Tin drew herself up to her full five foot four inches and told him she didn't think so, she wanted to take the monorail. Fast, easy and airconditioned. Virgil, who was perfectly happy in his plain dark green teeshirt and loved the idea of fast and easy, said, "You have _got_ to be kidding."

"But this is a Road Trip!" Brains said, in a way that Virgil could clearly hear the initial capital letters, "not a business trip…at least for the next few hours. We've got time! You should have fun on a road trip – eat hotdogs, wear loud Hawaiian shirts, stop and look at the scenery and take lots of digi-shots of the sights."

Virgil, who thought Brains had probably lost his mind, pointed out that it was all desert out there, and the scenery didn't change between here and Las Vegas. He couldn't see how wearing a shirt with little crayon colored fish all over it would make a difference.

Tin-Tin protested that they needed the extra time they'd built into the trip, so they could get to Vegas ahead of schedule to prepare for the Brains' presentation. Brains countered that they'd been working on the project for the last year and a half, and Tin-Tin had made him practice his presentation over and over before they'd left Tracy Island, so she shouldn't be so worried. If he didn't know it by now, another day of practicing in a hotel room wasn't going to do him any good.

"You have got to be kidding," Virgil said, again. He was aware that he was repeating himself, but it was all he had. The shirt was so bright it was interfering with the electrical connections in his brain.

Their chief engineer, who had been throwing off sparks of excitement just moments before, suddenly became still. He didn't say anything, just looked from Tin-Tin's latte'd-and-sunglassed belligerence to Virgil's stare for a moment.

Then he just gently reached out and took the bag from Tin Tin's hand.

They let him stand there for a moment, slowly refolding the shirts into the bag, disappointment exuding silently from every cell in his body, like a kid who'd just found out that he wasn't really getting to go to Disneyworld for spring break. Tin-Tin broke first. She blew out a resigned breath and put her hand on the shirts. Virgil watched as the girl who shopped in Paris and London said, "Well I guess it wouldn't hurt to be tourists for a few hours."

He'd have looked like a pretty bad sport if he refused to wear the mouthwash shirt after that, now wouldn't he?

Brains lit up again like somebody had plugged in a portable charger. He practically danced in place as he handed the aqua shirt back to Virgil. "You, uh, ah, wait. It'll be great fun!" he assured them.

"As long as no one I know sees me," muttered Tin Tin darkly.

Virgil was pretty sure that wouldn't happen. Most people who knew Tin-Tin would be doing the fast, easy and airconditioned thing…the monorail.

Brains wanted to drive to Vegas, he explained as they got underway again with their tilting luggage cart. Like in the old movies he watched occasionally with Gordon. Virgil suspected it was the Elvis thing again – a little "Viva Las Vegas" with a little "Blue Hawaii" thrown in… Except he was going to be the one stuck with the "blue" Hawaiian this time.

When Brains wanted to make something happen, he was pretty good at it. Of course, being able to throw out the Tracy Corp name always made things happen a teensy bit more easily. They wound up taking the monorail to get out of Los Angeles proper, since that part of the journey could have taken a day in itself, the way the traffic could be. Virgil was sure the three of them and their shirts provided a certain amount of entertainment for the other passengers. A small girl holding her mother's hand stood next to Virgil's seat and was quite vocal in pointing out to her mother the different fish on his shirt, their colors, their names, who was the momma fish and the daddy fish. When her mother told her not to bother the nice people, Tin-Tin said it was perfectly alright. That's why people wore shirts with fish on them after all and .wasn't the little girl smart to know so many good names for fish, like Brownie, Flip-Flop and Squiggles. Virgil's favorite was actually Finley. That one cracked him up.

They were decelerating before they knew it, pulling into the San Bernadino station. Here the monorail split off into two different directions, the north branch roughly paralleling Interstate 15 and the South paralleling Interstate 10. The monorail system now criss-crossed the country and had become the major mode of travel for a good portion of the population. While some light, high-end goods traveled this way too, most was shipped by way of huge ground effect trucks that traveled on walled off, separate lanes of the major highways. Old style trains were pretty much only for railway buffs, now.

Brains insisted on having one of the station porters take their picture standing in front of the monorail. After retrieving the device they all looked at the picture. Virgil thought his shirt looked like something Walt Disney threw up on, after having fish for dinner. Tin-Tin just closed her eyes for a moment then turned away. Brains just went on and on about what a great photo it was, immediately punching things into his data pad.

"Brains, are you sending that picture somewhere?" asked Tin-Tin suspiciously.

"Well, ah, maybe to, ah, Ruth…" Brains had stopped calling Grandma "Mrs Tracy" after their Memphis trip. Virgil didn't want to know why.

"Well, that's OK, I guess…" Tin-Tin said.

"And I sent it to the Kinetic Studies group," he added.

"You _what?_ Brains, I _know_ some of those people!"

Brains just shrugged and pointed out that most of that group wouldn't have any idea that a Hawaiian shirt and brown suede walking shoes was a fashion faux pas. Most of that group thought baked beans over a Bunsen burner was haute cuisine. Virgil had to admit he had a point there.

At the EHA vehicle rental lot (a recent merger of the struggling rental companies Enterprise, Hertz and Avis, who no longer had enough customers to survive independently), the first thing that caught Virgil's eye was a huge antique Cadillac convertible, the width of a small ocean liner and dripping with chrome.

"Wow! Now that's something you don't normally see outside a classic car show or a museum," Virgil said, suddenly interested as he circled the powder blue vehicle.

Brains stood there grinning like an idiot.

"Brains, what have you done?" asked Virgil. "We can't actually drive this thing! It's an antique! It wouldn't make it ten yards!"

"I-isn't it, uh, great? But i-it's not really an, uh, antique, uh, Virgil. I-it's a, uh, repro. They were, uh, renting it to a-a movie, uh, unit, a-and the crew left it, uh, here. I-it was on the, uh, EHA website."

Virgil knew Brains liked cars. He shared Alan's passion for building and racing fast machines, and he and the youngest Tracy brother had designed a couple that Alan had actually raced. This one, though, looked like the pictures of those old "land cruisers" from Grandma's childhood. You had to hand it to Brains. He certainly wanted to make this little jaunt in style…very retro style, but style nonetheless. At least this car actually had current engineering under the hood, which meant the fuel cells it ran on wouldn't have to be re-fueled between here and Las Vegas…and probably well beyond if they'd felt like it.

"We'll drive up I-15 through the high desert and should reach Primm by sundown," said Brains as he opened the trunk. Their luggage looked lost in the vast space.

Since they had left the airport early and it was still only midmorning when they arrived in San Bernardino, Virgil had thought they should be in Las Vegas before sunset. He wondered why Brains was timing the trip to arrive late in the day, an hour short of their destination. He decided he was afraid to ask.

Tin Tin settled in the back of the Cadillac, feet up on the seat, which was wide enough for her to lie down flat without having to bend any portion of her body. She took out computer, papers and headphones and pointedly went to work going over the upcoming presentation. Virgil looked for a moment at Brains, seated behind the wheel in his jaunty Panama hat, happy as a clam covered in orange and blue parrots. He couldn't help but smile.

Fifteen minutes and twenty miles later they had driven out of the populated areas into more terrain. It was becoming quite hilly as they climbed, before they broke into the high desert proper. It was April, and there had apparently had been a very wet spring that year, because spread out in patches across the landscape were smears of amazing oranges and yellows, with occasional hazes of blue. What Virgil had thought would be relentless brown, dry scrub was surprisingly full of color and growing things. Even Tin- Tin put down her papers and pulled out her ear buds to look at the passing scenery, remarking that it was sort of awesome in the sense that its wide-open emptiness wasn't actually so empty. Brains just smiled like he'd known it would be like this all along.

When they reached Barstow, Brains decided they should go to a real truck stop for lunch. He told them that he had actually never been to a real truck stop – his traveling had never taken him into the orbit of any of those places with the bright wooden signs and all the huge trucks in the parking lot. It was actually amazingly noisy, as many of the trucks had been left running for one reason or another. Virgil wasn't too sure he wanted them to all parade into the place wearing shirts that screamed I AM A TOURIST AND I'M GOING TO MAKE SURE YOU KNOW I'M LAME-ASS PROUD OF IT! Brains was ignoring him, clicking away taking pictures. Virgil wasn't sure exactly what he was going to do with them but he suspected they would show up on some blog that Brains subscribed to. His interests were so wide ranging and eclectic that it was anyone's guess where. He thought he'd better not mention that to Tin Tin though.

Inside, the dining area was clean and well lit and doing a booming business. They made their way to a booth near the front window and sat down. A waitress swiftly laid menus in front of them and told them she'd be right back.

Brains was intrigued by the portions that were being placed in front of four rather beefy drivers two tables over. One of them noticed him looking their way and obviously typing something into his data pad. The driver leaned toward one of the others and said something.

Virgil watched as all four stood and began to make their way to his table. _Oh, crap_. _Just what we need._ He motioned to Brains to put down the palm-held device and concentrate on his food. One thing he knew for sure, if a fight was going to happen he would have to do everything possible to keep Brains and Tin- Tin safe and out of the fray. Not that Tin-Tin would be amused by that – she could handle herself just fine…but Virgil couldn't help wanting to protect her…he was a guy and she was a girl. He just didn't want whatever happened here to ruin their trip. He'd actually begun to actually enjoy it at this point. He'd even been singing "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" with Brains as they were entering Barstow, until Tin-Tin had first begged them to stop and then threatened them with bodily harm. She was joking, of course…he hoped. Just like he hoped these truck driver guys would be good sports...maybe.

Brains laid his data pad down and gazed benignly at the four giants who now stood on one side of their table. They all looked at the bespectacled young man in the parrot-covered shirt, and Virgil had a sudden flashback to a lunchroom incident involving a similarly nerdy kid who was smarter than the jocks and got picked on regularly, until he and Scott had decided to keep an eye on him.

The first driver looked at Brains, then at Tin-Tin, then nodded at Virgil and, pointing his chin to the parking lot that lay beyond the window, said, "You driving that powder blue number parked out there by my truck?"

"Well, ah, yes, the vehicle in, ah, question is ours, at least for the, uh, day," Brains happily concurred, seemingly oblivious to his impending doom.

"My granddaddy had one just like that. Same color too," he said.

"Well, it's not a-a real, ah, antique you know. It's a reproduction, from an, uh, kit," offered Brains.

"Cool," said the second driver.

Tin-Tin and Virgil exchanged looks. Tin-Tin gave the four drivers her brightest smile and asked them if they'd like to join their group for lunch, at which point the drivers starting smiling, too, and went back to their table to grab their chairs and bring them over. They'd noticed the Cadillac when it drove up, as had several other of the drivers, and it had provoked quite a bit of childhood nostalgia amongst the more grizzled of them. When Virgil explained that all three of his group were engineers, and he in particular especially gravitated toward BIG vehicles, on which he did a lot of research and development in the company he worked for, their four new friends dived right in, discussing old cars, new cars, trucks, race cars, old vs new technology. Virgil saw them practically fall in love with Tin-Tin on the spot when she started discussing engine specs and load variances for their ground effect vehicles. As the conversation continued and got louder and more laughter-filled, other truckers gathered, coming and going, listening in and adding their questions and opinions.

It suddenly occurred to Virgil that he was discovering some very valuable information that he could bring back to his father, which might have bearing on some new work for Tracy Corp. Who had known Brains' road trip would turn out to be so interesting?

They left their overworked waitress very happy, with a huge tip for all the food and coffee refills she'd had to provide for the crowd at their table. Virgil was surprised, when they returned to their car, to find out that somewhere in the midst of the proceedings, Brains had managed to discover that she was a single mother with two children and was trying to put herself through night school to get a degree, although she wasn't finding the juggling act easy. Virgil had a distinct suspicion that the waitress would soon be receiving a call from some education grant program that had just happened to have gotten her name from someone well connected...

As they drove out of Barstow, the road headed to the north and east toward the Mojave Desert preserve. It was now well past noon and Brains was checking his data pad again, commenting that they should make Primm, Arizona in good time. In good time for what, he didn't say…but Virgil agreed with the timing, since they were only a couple of hours away from the border of California and Nevada.

The I-15 followed along the north side of the Mojave and here the landscape became spectacular. The land to the north of the road was something of a long flat plain that ran to the base of stark hills, brown and gray where they were nearer and blue further away. But between the highway and the hills, the desert was awash with color, the dominant color being bright yellow with swaths of orange. Here and there Joshua trees raised shaggy arms up to the sun and sprouted six foot stems with clusters of white flowers adorning them. Tufts of yellow speckled the lower slopes where it became more rocky, the blue of lupins where it was sandier.

They all decided to pull over and take a walk out into the desert where the flowers bloomed so explosively from the abundant spring rains. "Oh my goodness, Brains. It's beautiful," said Tin Tin. "I had no idea."

Neither had Virgil. He stood apart from the other two, gazing out over the flat lands sweeping toward the stark gray and brown hills, a carpet of blazing yellow with slashes of orange and purple. Now that he was closer he could see low growing cacti sporting extravagant pink blooms that looked more like the silk flowers Grandma had owned in his youth than the real thing. It made him want to get out his paints, the urge strong enough so that he pulled out his data pad and start taking reference photos. His fingers itched for his sketchpad. He wished the rest of the family could be here for this moment in the hot spring sunshine in the high deserts of California.

Brains spoke. "You see a-a desert in a book and you, ah, think, how can a desert be pretty? It's, ah, just empty and dry. Then you, ah, come out, ah, here and you, ah, see it and you feel it…and i-it's beautiful."

Virgil and Tin-Tin just nodded.

Brains continued, "This is a-an unusually, ah, good year for the, uh, desert wildflowers. You don't get, ah, this, uh sort of thing very often."

And with that they all rather reluctantly returned to the car to resume their trip.

They were just outside Baker when Tin-Tin leaned forward, peering through the windshield. "What in the world is that?" she asked, pointing to a tall, pencil-thin structure in the distance.

"Ah, that, uh, Tin-Tin, is, uh, the Tallest Thermometer in the, uh, World," Brains said, with a big smile.

Virgil had to laugh at the look on Tin-Tin's face.

As they drew closer they saw that it was indeed a very tall version of an old fashioned thermometer. Brains told them that it reached 134 feet at the top, with every 10 degrees marked along its height. At the bottom was a round sign representing the bulb that normally would have contained the mercury. On it were the words "Baker. Gateway to Death Valley."

Virgil was watching Brains get that twitchy look again. "We're not detouring to Death Valley, are we?" he asked.

"Not at all," Brains replied.

"Oh, good," said Tin-Tin. "You had me worried for a minute there."

"We're taking a little drive down Kelbaker Road into the Mojave Preserve."

By this time, Virgil was thinking, it was probably at least 99 degrees out. Of course, his grandmother would laugh and say 'But it's a dry heat.' Still…

But so far Brains had been batting 1000, so Virgil decided he was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt a little longer.

They turned into the preserve on a well paved road that ran through the park from one side to the other. They drove for about 12 miles, passing rhyolite hills off to the left that were the remains of ancient volcanic material. A few more miles down the road they came to some impressive old lava beds, driving by a volcanic cliff face that looked like a road crew had cut through at that point – although it was really, Brains assured them, totally the work of nature. Gray, green and red lichen covered the north sides of the lava outcroppings, painting the rock faces with subtle colors.

They found a place just beyond where the ground flattened out, and pulled over to take a walk around. The landscape was almost alien, with Joshua trees dotting the landscape and compact cacti of different shapes pushing through the rocky slopes.

Brains had his head down, examining the ground as they walked. His sudden exclamation made the other two stop and turn to watch him lean over and pick up what looked like a smoothish dark stone.

"I uh, believe I-I might have, uh, found a-a meteorite!" he chortled.

Tin Tin and Virgil moved toward him to look. Virgil thought the stone didn't look like much of anything, but then this would have been much more John's area. Brains fished in his pocket and withdrew what looked like a flat, round lithium battery on a string.

"I see you brought your toy with you," Tin Tin laughed.

"Indeed. You never, uh, know when you'll need a-a good, ah, magnet, a-after all," he said. Brains was the only person Virgil knew who would be likely to carry a rare earth magnet in his pocket.

The rock in question did look a little different from the gravel that littered the stony ground – darker, with generally smooth surface, slightly dimpled here and there. Brains noted that it was also heavier than it looked. He handed the small stone to Tin-Tin, who held it in her fingers while Brain suspended the string with the magnet on the end and held it still. As she moved the stone toward the magnet, the vertical string began to become an angle as the magnet moved toward the stone, until it finally leaped at the meteorite to close the gap with a small click.

"I would, ah, say I'm, ah, 99 percent sure it's a-a meteorite, but we'll, uh, need to do a-another test when I have, uh, time," Brains said as they made their way back to their vehicle. He also thought he might save it until they returned to Tracy Island so John could be in on the test.

"I o-only, ah, wish we had, ah, more time…a-and it was July," remarked Brains as they opened their respective doors and climbed into the car. "If you go, uh, further south i-into the, uh, Preserve, you reach, ah, Kelso Station – which was a-a train station, back i-in the, uh, early part of the, uh, 20th century…but more, ah, importantly, the, uh, Kelso Dunes a-are close by. They're, uh, singing dunes."

"Do they sing anything familiar?" said Virgil as he swung the car back onto the road to return to Baker.

Tin-Tin punched Virgil on the shoulder. "Owww!" he said, only half kidding. That girl could pack quite a punch behind that tiny frame.

"I've heard of those dunes, Brains," Tin-Tin said as she leaned forward to rest her chin on her hands on the seat back between the two men. "I remember reading something about them. Don't they occur in other places besides here?"

"There are a-about 30 places in the, uh, world with the right, ah, conditions for this a-acoustic characteristic." Brains went into his best professorial tones, what John had dubbed his "National Geographic Vidcast" voice. "They are a-also, uh, described a-as singing sands or booming dunes. When the, uh, conditions are just, ah, right, if something like the uh, wind or people, uh, walking near the crest cause the, uh, sand to start moving down the, uh, slope, it sets u-up a harmonic, uh, reverberation. E-energy in the, uh, form of gravitational potential energy which produces, ah, acoustic energy in this, ah, case. I find the, ah, physics of e-energy transformation fascinating. The sand, uh, particles have to basically be round and, uh, the right size, contain, ah, silica, have highly polished surfaces a-and they must be, uh, dry. While the, ah, theories have narrowed to 2-3 a-arguments, there is still no, uh, real consensus as to the, ah, exact mechanism of the sound production."

"What does it sound like?" asked Virgil.

"A-actually, rather like a-an old, uh, turboprop plane …or some say a-a didgeridoo. A-And I've read that the, ah, sand in the, uh, Kelso dunes is made u-up of rose quartz. Gives it a-a very rosy, uh, glow when the sun, ah, rises.

Pink sand dunes? Somehow Virgil couldn't quite envision Lawrence of Arabia standing heroically on top of a pink sand dune. A pink, _singing_ sand dune. Then he got to thinking it might make an interesting abstract painting. He'd have to think about that.

"Well you will have to have another adventure someday, Brains, when you come back this way," said Tin-Tin as she sat back in the car and buckled her seat belt. "How far is it to Las Vegas now?" she asked.

"Oh, we, ah, still have to, ah, stop in Primm, and that's a-about two and a half, uh, hours. We, ah, should make it a-at about sunset," Brains responded, looking at the old-fashioned paper map he'd pulled out of the glove compartment.

"Brains, if we just drove for another hour, we'd be in Las Vegas," said Tin-Tin. "And that's without even hurrying. What's so special about Primm?"

Virgil had been wondering about that himself.

"You'll see," was all Brains answered, with a smile.

They drove back out of the Mojave Preserve, past the lava field, the tufts of yellow flowers blooming among the rocks and the sandy desert floor stretching to the distance as they came to the intersection at Baker. Here they turned east toward Brains' mysterious destination of Primm, just over the California border.

The sun was lowering in the sky as they began the gradual climb to Mountain Pass. Brains had slipped momentarily into absent-minded scientist mode and was scribbling notes in the margins of the map he'd been looking at earlier. Tin-Tin,who had been researching some more information on the meteorite that Brains had picked up, suddenly chuckled and said, "Brains, did you know that that there was a rare earth mine at Mountain Pass? Your little magnet might have come from there."

Virgil fully expected Brains to suggest stopping and seeing if they could find the mine, but he just nodded and continued to make notes, and it wasn't until they'd cleared the Pass and had turned more northward for the straight shot toward the border that he once again joined the conversation.

"Look – you can see it now," he exclaimed.

Before them, rising out of the desert, lights twinkling in the dusk, was a Las Vegas style fantasy in multicolored, flashing and blinking lights. Rising even higher was a spiderwork of scaffolding, running in and around a structure shaped like an overgrown mining building. Easily visible against the darkening sky, the brightly lit signs announced that this was Buffalo Bill's Resort and Casino, and the scaffold structure turned out to be a very, very tall roller coaster.

_I should have known,_ thought Virgil. _This is the guy who designed an entry system that flips me over backwards on an oil painting, slides me headfirst down a chute, turns me around on something that looks like a railroad turntable and deposits me into the pilot's seat of Thunderbird Two. I ride my own little roller coaster every time we're called out on a rescue! _ It was one of Brains' little obsessions – roller coasters. Usually he claimed it was because it was such a perfect example of Newtonian physics at work, which might or might not be the whole story. Personally Virgil thought it was more that goofy 10 year old that still lived inside Brains that sometimes came out to play. Maybe the foster family who had raised him had done a very good job of developing his mind, but needed to push him down a few more water slides when he was a kid. Or it could all be connected to losing his original family in that tornado, and he'd been trying to understand whirling vortexes of energy ever since. Elvis, tornados, even those pink singing dunes he'd been so interested in back in Mojave – they were all connected, somehow, Virgil was sure of that.

Actually, come to think of it, you usually wound up having a lot of fun when you hung around with Brains. Well, maybe not when he was hunched over his magic chemistry set down in the lab. That could get a bit dicey. A couple of explosions that had caused everyone to evacuate the Tracy villa until they could get the chemical stink out came to mind. Alan had thought it was pretty funny…but then Alan would. Virgil and Scott kind of liked the oxyhydnite.

"The Desperado,' said Brains, his eyes sparkling almost as much as the lights from the sign with the Casino name – which consisted of a Buffalo surrounded by a feathered Indian war bonnet. all in sparkling neon-bright colors.

Tin-Tin was shaking her head. "I am not riding that, Brains."

Virgil pulled into the parking lot, where the coaster loomed above them. They sat for a moment, just taking it all in. Their eyes went up and up the enormous, yellow, metal track. They watched as a car full of people reached the top of the first great drop, the passengers screaming at the tops of their lungs as they plunged at an impossibly steep angle straight down into what looked like a hole in the ground, then shot up and out the other side to climb again.

"It's a-a hyper coaster. That, uh, means it has to be, uh, higher than 200 feet. The first hill o-on this coaster is, uh, 209 feet, with a-a 225 foot, uh, 60 degree drop. It develops, ah, speeds of up to, ah, 80-90 miles per hour. They, ah, had to i-improve the seating to protect the, uh, riders' necks and, uh, torsos from the, uh, gravitational forces. Much more uh effective in, uh preventing unnecessary, er, uh injuries."

"Brains, this is not filling me with confidence," said Tin Tin as she just laid her head against the front seat and shook it.

Brains continued, "This one was, ah, built late in the, uh, 20th century, a-and at the time it was one of the highest, uh, roller coasters in the, ah, world. It, uh, tied the record for longest, ah, drop and steepest, uh, roller coaster. It has recently been, uh, repaired and upgraded and the, ah, coaster group I keep up with has really, ah, had very complimentary things to, uh, say. The ride o-only lasts about, two and a half minutes, but you will pull a-almost four, ah, g's. It's a straight-ahead, uh, ride that doesn't loop, i-invert or tip anyone, uh, upside down. It's a-all about height and, uh, speed."

Virgil whistled. He was impressed now.

"I've heard i-it gets a lot o-of really good, uh, air time when it, uh, crests the hills a-at high speed."

Sounding like an old West gunslinger from one of Gordon's old movies, Brains said, "Let's, ah, ride." He started moving toward the front door of the casino.

"In the casino?" Tin-Tin asked.

"That's, uh, where it ride, uh, starts," Brains tossed back to them.

"Well, that's something you don't see every day," Virgil said as they followed him.

Inside the casino, lights flashed and bells jangled on a myriad different slot machines, people were laughing and occasionally there would be loud dinging sounds as someone won a big payout.

Tin-Tin decided, against her better judgement, to try the coaster. Virgil thought it sounded like his kind of ride – straight forward, screaming your head off, simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying.

The riders were strapped into their seats and reminded to sit back and hold their heads steady against the padding, and off they went.

The cars exited the casino and were drawn slowly up, up the first hill, the ratchets clacking beneath them noisily. As they rose into the evening sky the desert and mountains spread out before them. Las Vegas was clearly visible, a blaze of light 35 miles distant.

Tin-Tin was just thinking this part wasn't so bad, when they as they reached the crest. The racheting system that had lifted them to the height suddenly released the cars, and in the sudden silence there was that moment of slipping balance before they began to pick up speed. They plummeted almost straight down, screaming into a short tunnel in the ground then back out again to climb the next hill. Brains had told her about the remarkable "air time" of this roller coaster, but she'd never had her stomach up in her throat for quite so long when she wasn't up in zero-g vacuum. Coming off the second hill, they shot into a spiral that pulled the greatest g-forces of the ride, flattening them back into their seats, and then they went flying up the next hill, sweeping around the bends until they started braking to return to the interior of the casino.

Virgil, too, had thought how much parts of the ride reminded him of training for going into space. Especially the moments of weightlessness. Brains was right – it was fun.

The cars stopped on the platform and each rider was released and helped out of the cars. Tin-Tin's normally well groomed hair was sticking out at funny angles like a rumpled haystack, and the Hawaiian shirt was askew. Virgil was equally wind-whipped, his much-shorter hair standing up on end. Brains just looked exhilarated. And before Tin-Tin could prevent it, Brains had once again commandeered someone to take their picture.

"Brains!" wailed Tin-Tin.

Virgil sighed. "I think it's too late for damage control. Guess we're just going to have to learn to love awkward vacation photos. Gordon will probably have them blown up and framed, waiting for us when we get home."

Tin-Tin blew out a puff of air. Then she said, "Oh, what the hell. As long as we're on this road trip, we might as well make Brains ride everything else that's here. Come on," she said, looping her arms through both Virgil's and Brains' arms. "I want to see if I can get you both sick. But before we get on any more rides, one of you needs to buy me a hotdog. I'm famished."

"After all," Virgil added, meeting her smile with one of his own, "We've got time."

* * *

><p><em>To: <em>Members AT RollerCoasterSpeedDemons DOT org<em> _

_Subject: Whoo hoo!_

_Rode Desperado today at Buffalo Bill's. Highly recommend. Pictures attached. Sadly, the brunette is taken._

_:-) G-Force_


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